T203.
Bad Immigrant Daughters in Fiction and Nonfiction
Thursday, February 8, 2024
1:45 pm to 3:00 pm
Oops—you married outside your race, didn’t get a high-status job, botched family traditions, moved far away, forgot your mother tongue, spilled family secrets, got divorced, can’t cook, didn’t have children. The list of sins is endless for immigrant daughters who walk a tightrope between assimilating enough to succeed while being judged by the values of their parents’ generation and homeland. These writers reject the model minority myth and portray the drama and humor of living across cultures.
Participants
Grace Loh Prasad writes about belonging and diaspora. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Longreads, Catapult, KHÔRA, and elsewhere. Her memoir The Translator’s Daughter will be published in 2024 by Machete, an imprint of Mad Creek Books/The Ohio State University Press.
Monica Macansantos is the author of the forthcoming essay collection, Returning to My Father’s Kitchen (Northwestern University Press, 2024) and the story collection, Love and Other Rituals (2022). Her work has appeared in Colorado Review, The Hopkins Review, Lit Hub, and Electric Lit, among others.
Lisa Chiu is a writer whose work has appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, People magazine, and anthologies including Cheers to Muses: Contemporary Works by Asian American Women and Who’s Your Mama?: The Unsung Voices of Women and Mothers. She is currently working on a memoir, HUNGRY GHOST.
Lindsay Wong is the author of the critically-acclaimed, award-winning, and bestselling memoir, The Woo-Woo, a YA novel, My Summer of Love and Misfortune, and a recent short story collection, Tell Me Pleasant Things About Immortality. She teaches creative writing at The University of Winnipeg.
Madhushree Ghosh is author of Khabaar: An Immigrant Journey of Food, Memory and Family (University of Iowa Press, 2022), a gold medalist IPPY. Her work was Pushcart-nominated and named a Best American Essay in Food Writing. Her essays and OpEds have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Longreads, and others.
